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> A quick review of the budget and supporting Commerce Department Appendix suggests the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has received everythin

> A quick review of the budget and supporting Commerce Department Appendix suggests the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has received everything it requested ($3,586,193,000), and will not suffer the indignity of fee diversion... https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/05/23/uspto-3-6-billion-presidents-fy-2018-budget-avoids-fee-diversion/id=83633/ https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/05/23/uspto-3-6-billion-pres... more about the fee diversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Patent_and_Trademark_Office#Fee_diversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Patent_and_Trade... The USPTO isn't mentioned in the congressional budget resolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_federal_budget#Congressional_budget_resolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_federal_bud... > Congress Approves $1.3 Trillion Spending Bill, Averting a Shutdown https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/us/politics/house-passes-spending-bill.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/us/politics/house-passes-...

ChrisLomont 8y ago
USPTO processed >600K patent applications in 2015 [1]. I assume more recent years are similar. Looking over their fee schedule they probably bring in around ~$1-2K per patent application. I'll be generous at $2K. So they have ~3.5B + 1.2B in revenue. This allocates on avg <$8K to evaluate a patent. Patent examiners likely cost ~150K/yr to employ (wages, benefits, overhead). This is $300/hr. So an examiner has on avg ~25 hours to evaluate a possibly lengthy, complex, specialized document that often took a team many months to prepare. That's not very much time to do the job people want them to do. The limiting factor is money. [1] https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/h_counts.htm https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/h_counts.h...
- drhodes 8y ago
  > The limiting factor is money. When isn't it? Parent was suggesting the US is underfunding the USPTO. The undisputed claim is that they got all the money they requested. If they need more money, then they should request more. My line of reasoning can be falsified by showing the USPTO didn't get all the money they requested, or that through some bureaucratic machinations submitted an insufficient budget under duress. This quora post corroborates your napkin math https://www.quora.com/How-much-time-does-a-patent-examiner-spend-on-an-average-patent-application https://www.quora.com/How-much-time-does-a-patent-examiner-s... They seem to get 14-29 hours. Your implied claim is: that isn't enough time, for which you'll have to make a case because it isn't established. How much time is enough? What degree of "patent integrity" is acceptable, are there diminishing returns in spending twice as much time assessing a patent? What other federal programs should be sacrificed to make the patent system X% more accurate?
  - ChrisLomont 8y ago
    >When isn't it? When it's time. Or skilled people. At some point there are not enough LeBron James' at any price to fill out the size roster one wants. At some point there is no physical way to spend X hours on a thing for X large enough and enough things. So showing that money is putting a definite upper limit on a thing shows one constraint is money. It's entirely possible there are not enough people on the planet to both invent novel things and validate those inventions as novel, for certain classes of things. So I suspect in patenting, there is also a shortage of experts capable of validating a thing. I know for some patents I've been involved with, at some point in the process there was likely not another person on the planet that would understand what we/I did because sometimes the edge of knowledge is completely esoteric and the domain of one person. Heck, there's very important math proofs right now that have gone unvetted for a decade despite all the world's experts working on it, having entire conferences and workshops dedicated to it, and they still cannot come to a conclusion about the work. I suspect such things happen in other fields as well, including patented things. So, in a situation like that, time and/or people is the limiting factor. >If they need more money, then they should request more. What they view as their need to accomplish what they want to do need not be what others want them to do. They also might make the request knowing more about how their budgetary process works than outsiders. Overall I'm fine with the system as it is, taking into account the difficulty and increased costs it would entail to make it significantly "better."
- jakamau 8y ago
  Wouldn't $150K/year in total compensation be $75/hour - thus changing it to ~ 100 hours to review the document? I think you still make a valid point. The deluge of patent applications and the relatively specialized knowledge base of certain patents makes it a challenge. If anything $150,000/examiner seems a bit low if we are trying to tie in building overhead, administration, and benefits to a per person figure.
  - ChrisLomont 8y ago
    >Wouldn't $150K/year in total compensation be $75/hour Oops - correct :)

ChrisLomont 8y ago

USPTO processed >600K patent applications in 2015 [1]. I assume more recent years are similar. Looking over their fee schedule they probably bring in around ~$1-2K per patent application. I'll be generous at $2K. So they have ~3.5B + 1.2B in revenue. This allocates on avg <$8K to evaluate a patent. Patent examiners likely cost ~150K/yr to employ (wages, benefits, overhead). This is $300/hr. So an examiner has on avg ~25 hours to evaluate a possibly lengthy, complex, specialized document that often took a team many months to prepare. That's not very much time to do the job people want them to do. The limiting factor is money. [1] https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/h_counts.htm https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/h_counts.h...

drhodes 8y ago
> The limiting factor is money. When isn't it? Parent was suggesting the US is underfunding the USPTO. The undisputed claim is that they got all the money they requested. If they need more money, then they should request more. My line of reasoning can be falsified by showing the USPTO didn't get all the money they requested, or that through some bureaucratic machinations submitted an insufficient budget under duress. This quora post corroborates your napkin math https://www.quora.com/How-much-time-does-a-patent-examiner-spend-on-an-average-patent-application https://www.quora.com/How-much-time-does-a-patent-examiner-s... They seem to get 14-29 hours. Your implied claim is: that isn't enough time, for which you'll have to make a case because it isn't established. How much time is enough? What degree of "patent integrity" is acceptable, are there diminishing returns in spending twice as much time assessing a patent? What other federal programs should be sacrificed to make the patent system X% more accurate?
- ChrisLomont 8y ago
  >When isn't it? When it's time. Or skilled people. At some point there are not enough LeBron James' at any price to fill out the size roster one wants. At some point there is no physical way to spend X hours on a thing for X large enough and enough things. So showing that money is putting a definite upper limit on a thing shows one constraint is money. It's entirely possible there are not enough people on the planet to both invent novel things and validate those inventions as novel, for certain classes of things. So I suspect in patenting, there is also a shortage of experts capable of validating a thing. I know for some patents I've been involved with, at some point in the process there was likely not another person on the planet that would understand what we/I did because sometimes the edge of knowledge is completely esoteric and the domain of one person. Heck, there's very important math proofs right now that have gone unvetted for a decade despite all the world's experts working on it, having entire conferences and workshops dedicated to it, and they still cannot come to a conclusion about the work. I suspect such things happen in other fields as well, including patented things. So, in a situation like that, time and/or people is the limiting factor. >If they need more money, then they should request more. What they view as their need to accomplish what they want to do need not be what others want them to do. They also might make the request knowing more about how their budgetary process works than outsiders. Overall I'm fine with the system as it is, taking into account the difficulty and increased costs it would entail to make it significantly "better."
jakamau 8y ago
Wouldn't $150K/year in total compensation be $75/hour - thus changing it to ~ 100 hours to review the document? I think you still make a valid point. The deluge of patent applications and the relatively specialized knowledge base of certain patents makes it a challenge. If anything $150,000/examiner seems a bit low if we are trying to tie in building overhead, administration, and benefits to a per person figure.
- ChrisLomont 8y ago
  >Wouldn't $150K/year in total compensation be $75/hour Oops - correct :)